Thursday, 17 June 2010
Seventy Years On I
A new de Gaulle is needed, to restore good conservative dirigisme and high levels of co-operative membership, including (as in the United States) housing co-operatives even for the upper middle classes, in opposition to the capitalist corrosion of everything that conservatives exist in order to conserve.
And, inseparably therefrom, to restore an independent French foreign policy drawing on the glorious battles against all four of German occupation, Soviet infiltration, American domination, and the unbalancing of the nascent EU by British accession.
The next Presidential Election awaits. Sarkozy simply has to go.
But where is that no less necessary figure, the British de Gaulle?
And, inseparably therefrom, to restore an independent French foreign policy drawing on the glorious battles against all four of German occupation, Soviet infiltration, American domination, and the unbalancing of the nascent EU by British accession.
The next Presidential Election awaits. Sarkozy simply has to go.
But where is that no less necessary figure, the British de Gaulle?
Seventy Years On II
The Vichy regime’s enactment of, in particular, anti-Semitic legislation unbidden by the Germans can only be deplored, as can its decision to fight with the Axis rather than simply to withdraw from the War. But when it comes down to the Armistice itself, what else were the French supposed to do in 1940?
In the neoconservative world of perpetual early adolescence, there may have been some sort of third way. But in the real world, there was not. There was the option of doing what they did. Or there was the option of France’s incorporation into the Third Reich, which would thus have acquired the French Empire on every continent. Which would have been preferable? Clearly, the option taken.
To the end of the War and beyond, many of the French regarded Pétain as fighting Hitler from Vichy as surely as de Gaulle was fighting Hitler from London. That view may not have been entirely right, but it was certainly not entirely wrong.
Pétain’s name was never abominated like that of Laval, who really did want France to be run from Berlin. Thanks both to Pétain (who instead wanted to restore the monarchy, an institution always reviled in practice by Fascists) and to de Gaulle (who was also later to consider most seriously such a restoration), Laval never got his wish.
Leaving aside the question of whether Hitler ever had the slightest intention of invading Britain, and if he did then he inexplicably ignored the open goal in 1943, imagine if such an invasion had in fact taken place and then been, as it certainly would have been, successful at least to the extent of capturing London, which is geographically peripheral within its country just as Paris is.
Churchill or whoever might have fled to somewhere or other, although heaven knows where – if Britain had fallen, then America would immediately and understandably have reached the most cordial terms with Germany, with which she was not at war when any such possibility existed.
But if he had ever come back in triumph to a country still legally independent and possessed of her Empire, then that would have been thanks to those who had stayed on and secured that state of affairs, not least against the Laval-like domestic elements that would have wanted incorporation into, and thus also the surrender of the Empire to, the Reich.
It was only thanks to Pétain that there was still a France, as such, for de Gaulle or anyone else to liberate. Had much the same circumstances ever arisen here, then to have done much the same thing would have been infinitely preferable to the only alternative available, not in an ideal world, but in the real world.
There would have been no question of fighting with the Axis, since the War would have been over; the Soviet Union would have come to terms perfectly easily, having started the War as part of the Axis anyway.
Nor would legislation mining the rich seam of French anti-Semitism have been enacted here, since the new government would have been a bulwark against those who wanted it as surely as against those who wanted to go to war against Stalin.
It would have been only thanks to say, Chamberlain, that there would still have been a Britain, as such, for Churchill or anyone else to liberate.
Such things are lost on the neocons of the world, of course. If they were not, then they would not hold the views that they do on Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or so very many other places and subjects.
But grown-ups have no excuse.
In the neoconservative world of perpetual early adolescence, there may have been some sort of third way. But in the real world, there was not. There was the option of doing what they did. Or there was the option of France’s incorporation into the Third Reich, which would thus have acquired the French Empire on every continent. Which would have been preferable? Clearly, the option taken.
To the end of the War and beyond, many of the French regarded Pétain as fighting Hitler from Vichy as surely as de Gaulle was fighting Hitler from London. That view may not have been entirely right, but it was certainly not entirely wrong.
Pétain’s name was never abominated like that of Laval, who really did want France to be run from Berlin. Thanks both to Pétain (who instead wanted to restore the monarchy, an institution always reviled in practice by Fascists) and to de Gaulle (who was also later to consider most seriously such a restoration), Laval never got his wish.
Leaving aside the question of whether Hitler ever had the slightest intention of invading Britain, and if he did then he inexplicably ignored the open goal in 1943, imagine if such an invasion had in fact taken place and then been, as it certainly would have been, successful at least to the extent of capturing London, which is geographically peripheral within its country just as Paris is.
Churchill or whoever might have fled to somewhere or other, although heaven knows where – if Britain had fallen, then America would immediately and understandably have reached the most cordial terms with Germany, with which she was not at war when any such possibility existed.
But if he had ever come back in triumph to a country still legally independent and possessed of her Empire, then that would have been thanks to those who had stayed on and secured that state of affairs, not least against the Laval-like domestic elements that would have wanted incorporation into, and thus also the surrender of the Empire to, the Reich.
It was only thanks to Pétain that there was still a France, as such, for de Gaulle or anyone else to liberate. Had much the same circumstances ever arisen here, then to have done much the same thing would have been infinitely preferable to the only alternative available, not in an ideal world, but in the real world.
There would have been no question of fighting with the Axis, since the War would have been over; the Soviet Union would have come to terms perfectly easily, having started the War as part of the Axis anyway.
Nor would legislation mining the rich seam of French anti-Semitism have been enacted here, since the new government would have been a bulwark against those who wanted it as surely as against those who wanted to go to war against Stalin.
It would have been only thanks to say, Chamberlain, that there would still have been a Britain, as such, for Churchill or anyone else to liberate.
Such things are lost on the neocons of the world, of course. If they were not, then they would not hold the views that they do on Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or so very many other places and subjects.
But grown-ups have no excuse.
Londonderry Air
Peter Hitchens writes:
I have said for years that the British government should apologise for Bloody Sunday. This is for firmly Unionist reasons. Londonderry, as I still call it, is in my view a British city, and certainly felt like one to me when I at last managed to go there a few years back. I've nothing against those who wish to call it 'Derry' (or 'Doire'), provided they don't mind me calling it Londonderry. But I think the BBC, being a British institution, should stick with 'Londonderry' - as should ministers in the British government. I'll relax my view of this if ever I hear an Irish politician , or RTE, the Republic's equivalent of the BBC, refer to the city as 'Londonderry' in a gesture to its Protestant inhabitants.
But the main point of this is simple. If such a thing had happened to Her Majesty's peaceful subjects in Portsmouth, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool or Aberdeen, the government would - and should - have fallen the next day.
And it remains shameful that Edward Heath and his Cabinet did not resign the morning after this dreadful blunder, which was of course perpetrated by soldiers - but by soldiers whose orders and deployment originated in London, and in the not-very-bright policies of the day towards Ireland.
So I am glad of the apology, far too long delayed. I think David Cameron delivered it with proper gravity and without any attempt to qualify it. This was right.
But I am annoyed by the report, which seems to me to have an entirely political purpose and may not be a wholly accurate account of events. How can we know, in such detail, so long afterwards? It is interesting to examine one's memory, when events which took place in one's own lifetime gradually solidify into historical events. I can remember hearing the news of the shootings on the Sunday evening on the radio (as I generally heard news in those days of scarce TVs and infrequent bulletins) that freezing cold weekend in York, and the angry demonstration we students mounted the following day, its indignation for once entirely justified. But if you asked me for details of either day, instead of brief and probably misleading scraps of memory, I would be unable to help you.
In fact a couple of years ago, on an assignment in Moscow, I travelled by metro to the district where I had lived for a year in 1992. When I arrived at the familiar station, I made for the steps by which I was sure I had always exited, and walked as if to go to my block of flats. I was completely wrong. The exit was wrong. My direction was wrong. I walked the wrong way, in increasing bafflement, for half a mile because I was so sure I was right. Reluctantly, I had to accept that my memory, for all its insistent clarity, was misleading, to put it mildly. And that was a distance in time of about 16 years, less than half the period which separates us all from Bloody Sunday.
I'll have more to say about this later, but if we are to go on a voyage of rediscovery through the Northern Ireland Morass, I think we need to be a good deal more even-handed about what we study.
And by the way, the closed-minded people who always write in and say that I am some kind of patsy for the 'Loyalist' scum are completely wrong. I loathe the violent racketeers of the 'Loyalist' side just as much as I loathe the IRA. My case is and remains that the compromise which kept Northern Ireland British could have been reformed peacefully, and under British rule - and that Direct Rule was actually rather a good thing, which could and should have been made permanent. It was those who insisted on the 'Irish Dimension' who turned this from a reasonable campaign for reform into a struggle over sovereignty which is not yet over. And it was those people who also marginalised the decent and the lawful, and brought into power the bloodstained and the lawless.
If we ever conducted a proper inquiry into the whole Northern Ireland shambles, from 1969 to now, the Irish Republican Army and its front men and women would be the principal culprits, making trouble where there was none, pretending to be what they were not, always preferring hate and violence to peaceful compromise.
And:
Very few Irish people, either side of the border, wanted a war in 1969. A very small number of bilious hate-mongers did want a war, and succeeded in getting one by use of the classic methods of terror. The shame was that the lawfully-constituted authorities reacted with text-book incompetence, as if they had read the terrorist manual and had decided to do exactly what the terrorists wanted on every occasion - internment, Bloody Sunday, torture of suspects.
May I here recommend Dominic Sandbrook's extraordinarily good summary of the affair, with a good appreciation of the difficulties involved, in his book White Heat.
The origin of the problem lies in the creation of the Stormont Parliament at partition, and the disastrous creation of the 'Protestant State' when there should have been direct rule from London from the start. Plenty of British politicians had long wanted to get rid of Northern Ireland, and didn't have their hearts in keeping it British.
In fact, Direct Rule, once begun, rapidly got rid of most of the anti-Catholic discrimination in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland. Enormous progress was made in this matter, especially in housing and employment - and could and would have been made in policing had it not been for the efforts of the terrorists to frighten Roman Catholics out of joining the RUC. There had always been plenty of peaceful, constitutional Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland who were happily reconciled to living under the British flag, and they have been betrayed by recent events just as much as have the Protestants who desire passionately to remain British.
Also, until quite late in the story, the Dublin government had no interest at all in encouraging the anti-British movement. They didn't want to acquire a resentful Protestant minority, thanks very much. In fact, the behaviour of recent Dublin governments, in promoting the 'Irish Dimension' is one of those odd cases of a political elite in the grip of impractical utopianism. It was encouraged by a strange combination. First, there was the effect of US politics (read Conor O'Clery's superb book The Greening of the White House about Bill Clinton's cynical embrace of Irishry to win back Catholic working-class votes lost by his party because of abortion).
Then there was EU pressure. The EU has long believed in a reunited Ireland under the Euro, the kilometre and the EU flag, and for years the 'European Parliament' published presumptuous maps of Ireland in which the old Irish borders of Leinster, Munster, Ulster (with all nine counties) and Connaught were superimposed on the actual frontier.
These things, plus the desire of the British 'deep state', well embodied by the Secret Intelligence Service, to get rid of a costly nuisance, lie behind the gradual surrender, starting with the Anglo-Irish agreement, moving on through the 'Peace Process', to the indefensible handover of the people of the Six Counties to the current shameful situation - rule by terrorist godfathers, some Green and some Orange.
No, the behaviour of the British state has not been perfect. But set beside the criminal murderers of the IRA, INLA and the UVF etc, I think much of it comes out pretty well, not least the Army.
I have said for years that the British government should apologise for Bloody Sunday. This is for firmly Unionist reasons. Londonderry, as I still call it, is in my view a British city, and certainly felt like one to me when I at last managed to go there a few years back. I've nothing against those who wish to call it 'Derry' (or 'Doire'), provided they don't mind me calling it Londonderry. But I think the BBC, being a British institution, should stick with 'Londonderry' - as should ministers in the British government. I'll relax my view of this if ever I hear an Irish politician , or RTE, the Republic's equivalent of the BBC, refer to the city as 'Londonderry' in a gesture to its Protestant inhabitants.
But the main point of this is simple. If such a thing had happened to Her Majesty's peaceful subjects in Portsmouth, Cardiff, Hull, Liverpool or Aberdeen, the government would - and should - have fallen the next day.
And it remains shameful that Edward Heath and his Cabinet did not resign the morning after this dreadful blunder, which was of course perpetrated by soldiers - but by soldiers whose orders and deployment originated in London, and in the not-very-bright policies of the day towards Ireland.
So I am glad of the apology, far too long delayed. I think David Cameron delivered it with proper gravity and without any attempt to qualify it. This was right.
But I am annoyed by the report, which seems to me to have an entirely political purpose and may not be a wholly accurate account of events. How can we know, in such detail, so long afterwards? It is interesting to examine one's memory, when events which took place in one's own lifetime gradually solidify into historical events. I can remember hearing the news of the shootings on the Sunday evening on the radio (as I generally heard news in those days of scarce TVs and infrequent bulletins) that freezing cold weekend in York, and the angry demonstration we students mounted the following day, its indignation for once entirely justified. But if you asked me for details of either day, instead of brief and probably misleading scraps of memory, I would be unable to help you.
In fact a couple of years ago, on an assignment in Moscow, I travelled by metro to the district where I had lived for a year in 1992. When I arrived at the familiar station, I made for the steps by which I was sure I had always exited, and walked as if to go to my block of flats. I was completely wrong. The exit was wrong. My direction was wrong. I walked the wrong way, in increasing bafflement, for half a mile because I was so sure I was right. Reluctantly, I had to accept that my memory, for all its insistent clarity, was misleading, to put it mildly. And that was a distance in time of about 16 years, less than half the period which separates us all from Bloody Sunday.
I'll have more to say about this later, but if we are to go on a voyage of rediscovery through the Northern Ireland Morass, I think we need to be a good deal more even-handed about what we study.
And by the way, the closed-minded people who always write in and say that I am some kind of patsy for the 'Loyalist' scum are completely wrong. I loathe the violent racketeers of the 'Loyalist' side just as much as I loathe the IRA. My case is and remains that the compromise which kept Northern Ireland British could have been reformed peacefully, and under British rule - and that Direct Rule was actually rather a good thing, which could and should have been made permanent. It was those who insisted on the 'Irish Dimension' who turned this from a reasonable campaign for reform into a struggle over sovereignty which is not yet over. And it was those people who also marginalised the decent and the lawful, and brought into power the bloodstained and the lawless.
If we ever conducted a proper inquiry into the whole Northern Ireland shambles, from 1969 to now, the Irish Republican Army and its front men and women would be the principal culprits, making trouble where there was none, pretending to be what they were not, always preferring hate and violence to peaceful compromise.
And:
Very few Irish people, either side of the border, wanted a war in 1969. A very small number of bilious hate-mongers did want a war, and succeeded in getting one by use of the classic methods of terror. The shame was that the lawfully-constituted authorities reacted with text-book incompetence, as if they had read the terrorist manual and had decided to do exactly what the terrorists wanted on every occasion - internment, Bloody Sunday, torture of suspects.
May I here recommend Dominic Sandbrook's extraordinarily good summary of the affair, with a good appreciation of the difficulties involved, in his book White Heat.
The origin of the problem lies in the creation of the Stormont Parliament at partition, and the disastrous creation of the 'Protestant State' when there should have been direct rule from London from the start. Plenty of British politicians had long wanted to get rid of Northern Ireland, and didn't have their hearts in keeping it British.
In fact, Direct Rule, once begun, rapidly got rid of most of the anti-Catholic discrimination in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland. Enormous progress was made in this matter, especially in housing and employment - and could and would have been made in policing had it not been for the efforts of the terrorists to frighten Roman Catholics out of joining the RUC. There had always been plenty of peaceful, constitutional Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland who were happily reconciled to living under the British flag, and they have been betrayed by recent events just as much as have the Protestants who desire passionately to remain British.
Also, until quite late in the story, the Dublin government had no interest at all in encouraging the anti-British movement. They didn't want to acquire a resentful Protestant minority, thanks very much. In fact, the behaviour of recent Dublin governments, in promoting the 'Irish Dimension' is one of those odd cases of a political elite in the grip of impractical utopianism. It was encouraged by a strange combination. First, there was the effect of US politics (read Conor O'Clery's superb book The Greening of the White House about Bill Clinton's cynical embrace of Irishry to win back Catholic working-class votes lost by his party because of abortion).
Then there was EU pressure. The EU has long believed in a reunited Ireland under the Euro, the kilometre and the EU flag, and for years the 'European Parliament' published presumptuous maps of Ireland in which the old Irish borders of Leinster, Munster, Ulster (with all nine counties) and Connaught were superimposed on the actual frontier.
These things, plus the desire of the British 'deep state', well embodied by the Secret Intelligence Service, to get rid of a costly nuisance, lie behind the gradual surrender, starting with the Anglo-Irish agreement, moving on through the 'Peace Process', to the indefensible handover of the people of the Six Counties to the current shameful situation - rule by terrorist godfathers, some Green and some Orange.
No, the behaviour of the British state has not been perfect. But set beside the criminal murderers of the IRA, INLA and the UVF etc, I think much of it comes out pretty well, not least the Army.
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
What If There Had Been No President Obama?
Where BP was concerned, things would have been no different. Obama is no more anti-British than every other President of the United States, past or future. Or, to put it the other way, every other President of the United States, past or future, was or will be no more pro-British than Obama. Who do you think that the first one was? And since when was the President of the United States paid to be pro-British?
The attraction of Obama has always been, not the man himself, but his supporters: Bob Casey, Ben Nelson, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Bart Stupak, Jim Jones, Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel, Squire Lance, Christopher Buckley, Douglas Kmiec, Donnie McClurkin, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in California and Florida to re-affirm traditional marriage, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in Colorado to end legal discrimination against working-class white men, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in Missouri and Ohio not to liberalise gambling, and those who voted for Obama from coast to coast while also keep the black and Catholic churches (especially) going.
Obama has signed healthcare into law after having promised not to do so if there were any provision for federally funded abortion, which there is not; would that there were a public option of a single-payer system alongside that ban, so as to make abortion practically impossible, but one thing at a time. Nor is their coverage for illegal immigrants, still less the amnesty being promoted by Senate Republicans. Traditional marriage is Obama's own stated view. He has kicked the Freedom of Choice Act into the long grass, and instead endorsed Casey's Pregnant Women Support Act as well as concentrating on the Employee Free Choice Act supported by pro-life stalwarts such as Stupak and Marcy Kaptur, who declined to endorse either Obama or Clinton because neither was offering enough to the victims of the "free" trade agreements that she and Stupak are now prominent in seeking to repeal, not without White House encouragement.
And what was the alternative? The Clintons? I was initially quite warm towards John McCain. Yes, the suggestion that McCain was against abortion was laughable. But a man of McCain's experience, like the decorated Jacques Chirac, struck me as likely to leave the warmongering to such draft dodgers as Bill Clinton and George Bush. However, he then came out as wanting Robert Kagan as Secretary of State and the treasonable Randy Scheunemann as National Security Advisor. With Britain tagging along as ever, that would have meant war against Iran, war against Russia over Georgia, and now war against Turkey and North Korea simultaneously.
Still, a credible primary challenge would be in order, both to keep Obama on his toes and because someone will have to be the nominee in 2016. Marcy Kaptur would be good: a pro-life battler and a Progressive Caucus member. A pro-life woman seeking the Democratic nomination has happened before. But never on a full platform of policies. And certainly never from the populist, anti-war Left. One to watch? Watch, and pray. Just don't expect her, or anyone else, to be pro-British. After all, why should they be?
The attraction of Obama has always been, not the man himself, but his supporters: Bob Casey, Ben Nelson, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Bart Stupak, Jim Jones, Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel, Squire Lance, Christopher Buckley, Douglas Kmiec, Donnie McClurkin, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in California and Florida to re-affirm traditional marriage, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in Colorado to end legal discrimination against working-class white men, those who voted for Obama on the same day as they voted in Missouri and Ohio not to liberalise gambling, and those who voted for Obama from coast to coast while also keep the black and Catholic churches (especially) going.
Obama has signed healthcare into law after having promised not to do so if there were any provision for federally funded abortion, which there is not; would that there were a public option of a single-payer system alongside that ban, so as to make abortion practically impossible, but one thing at a time. Nor is their coverage for illegal immigrants, still less the amnesty being promoted by Senate Republicans. Traditional marriage is Obama's own stated view. He has kicked the Freedom of Choice Act into the long grass, and instead endorsed Casey's Pregnant Women Support Act as well as concentrating on the Employee Free Choice Act supported by pro-life stalwarts such as Stupak and Marcy Kaptur, who declined to endorse either Obama or Clinton because neither was offering enough to the victims of the "free" trade agreements that she and Stupak are now prominent in seeking to repeal, not without White House encouragement.
And what was the alternative? The Clintons? I was initially quite warm towards John McCain. Yes, the suggestion that McCain was against abortion was laughable. But a man of McCain's experience, like the decorated Jacques Chirac, struck me as likely to leave the warmongering to such draft dodgers as Bill Clinton and George Bush. However, he then came out as wanting Robert Kagan as Secretary of State and the treasonable Randy Scheunemann as National Security Advisor. With Britain tagging along as ever, that would have meant war against Iran, war against Russia over Georgia, and now war against Turkey and North Korea simultaneously.
Still, a credible primary challenge would be in order, both to keep Obama on his toes and because someone will have to be the nominee in 2016. Marcy Kaptur would be good: a pro-life battler and a Progressive Caucus member. A pro-life woman seeking the Democratic nomination has happened before. But never on a full platform of policies. And certainly never from the populist, anti-war Left. One to watch? Watch, and pray. Just don't expect her, or anyone else, to be pro-British. After all, why should they be?
Against His Own Cause
Does Douglas Carswell believe in our parliamentary democracy, or not? We do not need to introduce that foreign and deeply flawed thing which is known both to his patrimony and to mine as "a device of demagogues and dictators".
Rather, we need better MPs, selected locally and by means involving the electorate as a whole, elected so as to guarantee a more accurate reflection of the breadth of public opinion, and therefore drawn from formations genuinely giving expression to this country's deep and wide political traditions.
As for "a referendum on further European integration", what should the question be? What would be the occasion of such a plebiscite, since the Lisbon Treaty is self-amending? And why would Carswell want to give the last word to the BBC, over the course of the month leading up to the poll? Look what happened in 1975.
If we had MPs as set out above, then they would restore the supremacy of British over EU law, a single amendment or one-clause Bill requiring neither referendum nor renegotiation. Why doesn't Carswell table that, instead of issuing grandstanding calls for a referendum which is never going to happen?
Rather, we need better MPs, selected locally and by means involving the electorate as a whole, elected so as to guarantee a more accurate reflection of the breadth of public opinion, and therefore drawn from formations genuinely giving expression to this country's deep and wide political traditions.
As for "a referendum on further European integration", what should the question be? What would be the occasion of such a plebiscite, since the Lisbon Treaty is self-amending? And why would Carswell want to give the last word to the BBC, over the course of the month leading up to the poll? Look what happened in 1975.
If we had MPs as set out above, then they would restore the supremacy of British over EU law, a single amendment or one-clause Bill requiring neither referendum nor renegotiation. Why doesn't Carswell table that, instead of issuing grandstanding calls for a referendum which is never going to happen?
Upon Examination
Rather than rewriting GCSEs to make them harder, we should abolish them, and restore in their place the O-levels that were stolen from an entire generation (mine) by the Prime Minister who, as Education Secretary, had already stolen our grammar schools.
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